Chapter 1 A Narrow, Winding Footpath to an Alternate Reality Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well. —Theodore Roosevelt For those not familiar with it, the Long Path is a hiking trail that runs 350 miles from the base of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the John Boyd Thacher State Park some ten miles west of Albany, New York. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of the Open Road, the Long Path’s creators first conceived of it as an unmarked trail that would connect New York City to the Adirondacks. Over many years, leaders and volunteers of the New York–New Jersey Trail Conference plotted its course, published information about the route, and blazed and built the trail. The Long Path was created by people who were passionate about nature, and it is maintained today by a network of volunteers for whom it is a labor of love. Despite all the hard work of the Trail Conference and its volun- teers, the Long Path is relatively unknown, especially compared to other long-distance trails. Only 119 persons had completed the full length of 1 © 2016 State University of New York Press, Albany the Long Path when I set out to through-run it on a sunny morning in August 2013. 2012 had been a big year, with six documented completions. In 2010, there was only one. Compare this to the granddaddy of long-distance hiking trails, the 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail, which according to the Appalachian Mountain Conservancy, a total of 14,086 persons have completed. In 2013 alone, 597 completions were reported. In other words, in a single year five times as many people completed the Appalachian Trail as had completed the Long Path in its entire lifetime—despite its being more than six times as long. I had lived in New York for years without ever hearing of the Long Path, until one summer day when I was running on the gentle carriage trails of Minnewaska State Park with my frequent companion, Odie, the family’s Labradoodle. We were passing through primeval forest shaded by hemlock, the path soft with their needles. Cresting a rise, we came upon an intersection with a narrow, winding footpath. This path did not look promising. Rocky and overgrown, it snaked among rhododendron bushes, hopped over a muddy bank, and disap- peared into shadows. A crooked sign nailed to a tree identified it as “The Long Path.” But the name meant nothing to me. As I studied this path, the wind picked up and whistled through the tree tops, and a cloud passed in front of the sun, darkening the scene. The idea of veering off onto a strange and unknown path did not seem responsible. Yet there was something intriguing about it. Odie sniffed the breeze, then looked back, waiting for direction. After careful deliberation, I decided to stick with the carriage trail, the easy and familiar choice. A moment later, the sun reemerged. I encountered the Long Path again a few years later, this time run- ning in Harriman State Park with my friend Todd Jennings. We came to an intersection and found a large boulder with “Times Square” stenciled in paint. I laughed out loud. As a New York City resident who knew the “real” Times Square, I thought this rock was surely some kind of joke. But no, Todd explained, this is the Long Path. It’s sort of like a paral- 2 • • Running the Long Path © 2016 State University of New York Press, Albany lel universe, he continued, similar to our own, but where ours is big, crowded, noisy, and fast, the Long Path is small, empty, quiet, and slow. It’s also a little mischievous, he added with a wink. I snorted in derision. “One universe is enough for me,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs, “let’s get out of here.” • But as time passed, parallel universes began to seem more appealing. Working as a financial analyst at a major investment bank was excit- ing—but stressful. Sort of like riding on a crazy roller coaster whose rickety wooden structure you sense is going to collapse—you’re just not sure when. “Small, empty, quiet, and slow” began to sound tempting. At work, my boss suffered a heart attack. He retired on disability, and some of his responsibilities were shifted to me. Then a colleague disappeared. She was rumored to be on extended medical leave, but no one ever heard from her again, not even her closest teammates. Her workload was handed to me. I was pleased to advance in my career, yet I sensed a troubling pattern. Then 9/11 hit. My company lost nineteen people in the World Trade Center collapse. It might have been much worse, but for the efforts of a former U.S. Army officer and decorated Vietnam veteran, Rick Rescorla, who took charge of the evacuation. Determined to do his duty to the last, he himself did not make it out. My office was in midtown, well outside of the disaster zone. But a neighbor in my apartment building barely made it out of the World Trade Center before it came crashing down. He was one of the survivors running through the streets covered in ash. The 9/11 attack reminded me that life is short. As much as I appre- ciated my job, and as proud as I was of the company where I worked, it was time to think of the bigger picture. Part of this meant getting back in shape, not only to preserve my physical health, but to keep an even mental keel in the face of volatile markets and dog-eat-dog competition. A Narrow, Winding Footpath to an Alternate Reality • 3 © 2016 State University of New York Press, Albany After 9/11, I got back in the habit of going for a daily run. After a hiatus of nearly ten years, I ran my third marathon, slowly and painfully, finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack. Up to this point, my running career had been completely undistin- guished. I had taken up running in high school in an effort to improve my fitness, tired of being the last to be picked for almost every game. But as I started to run, I found that after about ten minutes, my shins would swell and go numb. The doctor explained that this was probably a condition called “chronic compartment syndrome.” He stuck needles in my shin muscles to measure the pressure while I ran on a treadmill. Flummoxed by the tubes extending from my legs, I became dizzy and had to sit down. The test was interrupted, and the results were incon- clusive. But that didn’t stop the doctor from offering to conduct surgery that might alleviate the symptoms. I pictured the scalpel glinting under fluorescent lights and demurred. Despite the condition, I persisted in running, struggling through a four-year stint in the Army and somehow surviving my first mara- thon. A few more years passed before I finally underwent the surgery. To my astonishment, the procedure was effective, and the problem was corrected. Now for the first time in my life, I could run freely and with- out pain! Determined to run another marathon and set a new personal record, I added high-intensity speed work to my training program and promptly strained the iliotibial band (ITB), a tendon on the side of the knee. ITB syndrome is a common running injury, but at the time, no one could tell me what to do about it. I threw up my hands in disgust, focused my energies on work, and put on a few pounds. Then our first child was born. The ITB healed, but running was not a priority. Time went by, my career progressed, and I didn’t do much running at all until the shock of 9/11 got me back into a daily running regime and training for the third marathon. One year later, as my fortieth birthday was starting to near, a childhood memory surfaced in my mind. I was only fifteen at the time; a friend grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed out a man who was said to have run forty miles to celebrate his fortieth 4 • • Running the Long Path © 2016 State University of New York Press, Albany birthday. We were awestruck by this feat of endurance—we had never heard of anything like it. Now it was nearly twenty-five years later, and I found myself toying with the idea of a forty-mile birthday run. It would be an audacious goal. Perhaps it would help me take my running to the next level. I thought long and hard about the forty miles, but didn’t do much about it. Soon enough my fortieth birthday came and passed, and then another birth- day, and another. Even with unencumbered shins and the ITB long since healed, running such a distance was too daunting a prospect. It seemed too painful and boring. One day during the summer of 2005, I was running along an upstate New York country lane when I fell in step with a gentleman who looked to be in his fifties. We jogged together, trading stories. Trying to impress the fellow, I said I was training for a marathon (even though I wasn’t) and that I might run forty miles for my fortieth birthday (although strictly speak- ing, I was now forty-two).